In his latest book, David Levinthal explores the visual lexicon of the war in Vietnam through photographs that have thunderous, visceral impact. The images showcase the artist's sophisticated handling of photographic tools and techniques to dramatize figures and dioramas based on the war. His reflection on the consequential effects of the conflict on American popular culture and the artist's own memories of the era, Vietnam is haunted by the legacy of movies like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket and recontextualizes Hitler Moves East, Levinthal's breakthrough body of work made with Garry Trudeau just as America was withdrawing from Vietnam. With written contributions from French novelist Bernard-Henri Lévy; and art historian and curator Lisa Hostetler, the volume takes visual inventory of a war that shattered conventional ideas about America's geopolitical power, the national psyche, contemporary social relations, and mass media.
David Levinthal (b. 1949) lives and works in New York. Levinthal, a central figure in American postmodern photography, has staged tableaux using toys and miniature dioramas for nearly 50 years. He has produced a diverse oeuvre, utilizing primarily large-format Polaroid photography. Since the early 1970's, David Levinthal has been exploring the
relationship between photographic imagery and the fantasies, myths,
events, and characters that shape contemporary American's mental
landscape. His work has been a touchstone for conversations about
theories of representation in photography and contemporary art as he has
investigated the overlapping of popular imagery with personal fantasy
through all of his major series including Hitler Moves East, Modern
Romance, Wild West, Desire, Blackface, Barbie, Baseball, and History. In
2018, the George Eastman Museum presented David Levinthal: War, Myth,
Desire, the largest retrospective of his work to date accompanied by the
most comprehensive publication ever produced on his work. He has
received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim
Fellowship. His work is exhibited widely and part of the permanent
collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston,
the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
Carnegie Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of
Art.
Lisa Hostetler, PhD, is an independent curator and art historian specializing in Photography and Contemporary Art. She was Curator-in-Charge of its Department of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY from 2013 to 2021.
